He once temporarily ditched Queen Camilla to embark on a fling with Princess Anne when she was 19 – a scenario gratuitously immortalised in season three of The Crown where the pair enjoy a post-sex Bloody Mary.
Now, at the age of 86, Andrew Parker Bowles, who inspired Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, has slipped into a new, and rather more edifying role as a right-hand man to the royals.
On Sunday, Queen Camilla’s ex-husband represented Princess Anne at the memorial service for Clare Balding‘s father Ian, according to Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden, after stepping in for the Princess Royal on several previous occasions.
‘I learn that Andrew Parker Bowles formally represented Princess Anne on Sunday at the thanksgiving service for Ian Balding, Queen Elizabeth II’s former race trainer, who died in January aged 87,’ Eden, the Daily Mail’s diary editor, wrote.
It’s the second time in two months that Parker Bowles has stepped in for his ex-girlfriend Anne, having previously stood in her place at Field Marshal Lord Guthrie’s memorial service at the Guards’ Chapel.
The pair are old friends – they got together after a chance meeting at Royal Lodge, the Queen Mother’s home at Windsor, when Andrew was adjutant in the newly formed Blues and Royals regiment, a former aide-de-camp to the Governor-General in New Zealand.
Despite his reputation as a practised seducer and the age gap, the attraction between the Princess and the soldier was intense.
Indeed, many believe it was revenge that fuelled Camilla’s determined attempts to seduce Prince Charles: if Andrew was going to have the Queen’s daughter as his lover, she would have Her Majesty’s son.
At the age of 86, Andrew Parker Bowles has slipped into a new role as a right-hand man to the royals, including Princess Anne (pictured together in Hyde Park, London, in 1989)
She had no trouble attracting Charles, but was said to be truly in love with Andrew – whose Catholic faith meant he was never husband material for Anne.
The relationship fizzled out when he was posted to Germany and he reunited with Camilla. In July 1973, they were married at the Guards’ Chapel in Wellington Barracks, Central London.
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Despite their divorce 22 years later, Queen Camilla has maintained a strong and close friendship with Andrew – and he even had a special invitation on the guest list to the Coronation in May 2023.
Camilla was famously Charles’s mistress during her marriage to Andrew, while the latter is described by friends as having been ‘very naughty with women’ throughout.
But it seems any differences have been put aside as the pair are ‘joined at the hip’, as one insider has previously put it – claiming they are constantly in touch and make a great team.
The author Tina Brown has claimed it was Andrew, rather than Charles, who was the love of Camilla’s life. Whatever the truth, the man Brown describes as ‘a walking pink gin’ is said to remain one of her chief confidants.
‘They are joined at the hip,’ according to a friend. ‘He arranges so much for her. They have lunch together the whole time. He’s right in there. He was always, and still is, Camilla’s co-conspirator.’
The Marchioness of Lansdowne, one of Camilla’s Queen’s Companions, has said: ‘Everybody loves Andrew. He’s a real charmer but he’s always terribly misbehaving.’
She said of his enduring bond with Camilla: ‘Andrew will ring her up and tell her when she’s got something wrong and she’ll ring him up and say when he’s misbehaving.
Pictured: Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles at the Gold Cup Day of the Cheltenham Festival on March 18, 2016
‘Through adversity they’ve kept a really good family ethic. It helps with their children and grandchildren.’
Known as ‘The Brigadier’ in reference to his former career as an army officer who served with the Blues and Royals and was awarded a Queen’s Commendation for Bravery in Zimbabwe, Andrew has moved in royal circles for decades.
As a 13-year-old, he served as a page to Lord Simonds, then the Lord High Chancellor, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
‘My mother was a good friend of the Duke of Norfolk,’ he recalled. ‘The Lord Chancellor had no children so Bernard Norfolk suggested me to Lord Simonds. I have to say that he was the nicest man alive and gave me a very nice set of cufflinks.’
He described a sword fight during the dress rehearsal, saying: ‘All the pages had these little swords. If a group of bored small boys all have swords, you know what’s going to happen.’ He also played polo on the same team as Charles when both men were young and rode in the Grand National in 1969, coming 11th.
He first met Camilla in the late 1960s and they dated on and off for several years before marrying in 1973.
According to Andrew’s cousin John Bowes-Lyon, the couple were pressured into making the commitment when both their fathers published an engagement notice for them in The Times.
‘His hand publicly forced, Andrew proposed to his girlfriend of nearly seven years,’ wrote the author Sarah Bedell Smith.
‘Camilla was very much in love with [Andrew],’ Bowes-Lyon told Smith. ‘Her parents were very keen that Andrew should marry her.’
The Queen Mother, Princess Anne and Princess Margaret all attended their wedding, and the reception took place in St James’s Palace.
As a commanding officer of the Household Cavalry, Andrew accompanied the newly married Charles and Diana on horseback following their wedding in 1981 – but the marriage was not a faithful one on either side.
According to royal author Penny Junor, Andrew was ‘never be short of opportunities to be unfaithful’ when spending his weekdays in London, where his regiment was based.
The Daily Mail’s Richard Kay wrote in 2017: ‘All too often, the women were indeed friends of his wife, and showed scant loyalty to her by succumbing to his charms.’
But the royal expert claimed that ‘Andrew’s affairs were just a fact of life and not something Camilla often spoke about’, noting how there ‘was never a tense atmosphere in the couple’s home’.
Tina Brown later claimed that Camilla only resumed her affair with Charles because she was angry at her husband’s infidelities.
Andrew and Camilla divorced in 1995, saying in a statement that ‘throughout our marriage we have always tended to follow rather different interests, but in recent years we have led completely separate lives’.
The following year, he married his long-term mistress Rosemary Pitman. They were together until Rosemary passed away in 2010 of cancer, aged 69.
At the time of her death it was reported that Camilla was ‘deeply saddened’ by the news.
Andrew was a guest at Charles and Camilla’s wedding in April 2005, attending their service of blessing at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
